MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities have discovered a sophisticated smuggling tunnel equipped with electricity and ventilation not far from the Nogales port of entry into Arizona, U.S. and Mexican officials said Friday.
The Mexican army said the tunnel was found Thursday after authorities received an anonymous call in the border city of Nogales, Sonora, south of Arizona. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed that the Mexican military had discovered the football field-long tunnel with elaborate electricity and ventilation systems
.
.
U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Victor Brabble said the tunnel did not cross into the U.S.
The army said the anonymous
caller was reporting gunmen standing outside a two-story house in a
hilly neighborhood near the international bridge where motorists travel
between Mexico and the United States
.
Inside the house, soldiers
discovered a fake wall inside a storage closet under a staircase that
led to a dark room with buckets and clothes. After lifting a drain cover
in that room, soldiers found another staircase at the entrance of the
tunnel that went 16 feet underground and measured a yard in diameter.
Light bulbs lit the underground passage and pipes stretched across the
120-yard tunnel that Mexican army officials believe was built to smuggle drugs.
It was unclear whether officials
made any arrests, but the house where the tunnel was found was seized by
the local government. Military officials did not say how long they
believed the tunnel had been under construction, but authorities say it
can take six months to a year to build such a passage
.
Sophisticated secret tunnels
stretching across the international border have become increasingly
common as drug cartels invent new ways to smuggle enormous loads of
heroin, marijuana and other drugs into U.S
.
More than 70 such tunnels have
been found since October 2008, most of them concentrated along the
border in California and Arizona. In Nogales, Arizona, smugglers tap
into vast underground drainage canals.
No comments:
Post a Comment